"Let America Be America Again," published in Esquire and in
the International Worker Order pamphlet A New Song (1938), pleads for fulfillment
of the Dream that never was. It speaks of the freedom and equality which America
boasts, but never had. It looks forward to a day when "Liberty is crowned
with no false patriotic wreath" and America is "that great strong land
of love." Hughes, though, is not limiting his plea to the downtrodden
Negro; he includes, as well, the poor white, the Indian, the immigrant--farmer,
worker, "the people" share the Dream that has not been. The Dream
still beckons. In "Freedom's Plow" he points out that "America is
a dream" and the product of the seed of freedom is not only for all
Americans but for all the world. The American Dream of brotherhood, freedom, and
democracy must come to all peoples and all races of the world, he insists.

[. . . .]

Throughout Hughes's life--and his literary expression--the American Dream has
appeared as a ragged, uneven, splotched, and often unattainable goal which often
became a nightmare, but there is always hope of the fulfilled dream even in the
darkest moments. During World War II Hughes, commenting on the American Negroes'
role in the war, recognized this. ". . . we know," he said in a 1943
speech reprinted in The Langston HughesReader (1958),

that America is a land of transition. And we know it is within our power to
help in its further change toward a finer and better democracy dm any citizen
has known before. The American Negro believes in democracy. We want to make it
real, complete, workable, not only for ourselves--the fifteen million dark
ones--but for all Americans all over the land.

The American Dream is bruised and often made a travesty for Negroes and other
underdogs, Hughes keeps saying, but the American Dream does exist. And the Dream
must be fulfilled. In one of his verses he put it more plainly. He might
have been speaking to his harshest political critics or to the white youths who
beat him up on that long-ago summer day in Chicago.

Listen, America--
I live here, too.
I want freedom
Just as you.

From "The American Dream of Langston Hughes." Southwest Review
(1963).